The other candidates have
been active answering the many requests for further information.

These are the questions
Oxford Friends of the Earth have sent to the local candidates there:

1. Parts of
Oxfordshire have been earmarked for fracking (exploitation of shale gas by
hydraulic fracturing). Do you support fracking in Oxfordshire?

2. Thanks to the great
work of the Low Carbon Hub, a number of schools in the constituency have
installed solar panels, or are planning to do so. Do you commit to setting a
target for almost entirely carbon free electricity generation by 2030,
delivered by at least 75% renewables, and by making it possible for every
school to be powered by solar energy by 2016?

3. Do you think that
the proposed Flood Relief Channel, at a cost of £125M is the right solution to
Oxford’s flooding problems?

4. Do you commit to
tackle cold homes by insulating, on average, 1 million homes per year up to
2020, of which half are low-income homes?

5. Currently there is
an EU-wide moratorium on the use of neonicotinoid presticides due to the harms
these do to our bees. Do you commit to strengthening the National Pollinator
Strategy and extending the ban on neonicotinoid pesticides?

6. Do you commit to
protect the freedom to campaign by immediately repealing the 2014 Lobbying Act?

Kevin Parkin,
Oxford East, Socialist Party of Great Britain:

Thanks, but I should first explain that I am contesting this
election solely on the basis of seeking the votes of those who want to replace
the existing, capitalist system of minority ownership and production for profit
by a a new world society based on the common ownership and democratic control
of the Earth's resources, natural and industrial, and their use to turn out
what people need while at the same time respecting ecological balances. In our
view, this is the only framework within which the problem of global overwarming
and climate change can be rationally tackled. This point of view is developed
more fully in this article from our monthly magazine, the Socialist Standard:
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2008/no-1247-july-2008/too-little-too-late

I am sure that the measures you propose would contribute
marginally to this global problem and would be part of the solution in a
socialist society but I don't want people to vote for me on the basis that I
might agree with them.

Mike Foster, Oxford
West and Abingdon, Socialist Party of Great Britain

1.Parts of Oxfordshire have been earmarked for fracking
(exploitation of shale gas by hydraulic fracturing). Do you support fracking in
Oxfordshire?

Fracking is an example of how capitalism periodically gets
itself out of a fix by finding new techniques or commodities to replace old,
unprofitable ones. However, fracking isn’t being used to answer the call for
global need, but to acquire more profits for corporations. The amount of energy
we need is fairly stable and predictable, whereas profitability depends on the
uncertainties of the economic market. So, in capitalism, fracking’s development
isn’t going to be straightforward and problem-free. Capitalism’s short-term
drive for profits is more important than considering any of fracking’s
long-term consequences.

2.Thanks to the great work of the Low Carbon Hub, a number
of schools in the constituency have installed solar panels, or are planning to
do so. Do you commit to setting a target for almost entirely carbon free
electricity generation by 2030, delivered by at least 75% renewables, and by
making it possible for every school to be powered by solar energy by 2016?

Our current society has created several barriers to having
low carbon producing electricity generation. Fossil fuels will continue being
squandered as long as they remain profitable to the corporations which own
them. Their use will only decline when it is no longer as profitable, perhaps
when damage to the environment starts to damage the economy. But at the moment,
the wealth – and therefore, influence – owned by fossil fuel companies dwarfs
that of renewable energy providers. Another reason why our current society
struggles to reduce its carbon footprint is because of the massive amount of
energy and resources wasted on pushing money around. Institutions like banks,
insurance companies and finance departments don’t produce anything useful, but
prop up the current system. If we replace this system, then we will no longer
need these wasteful institutions. Instead, we can produce what we need and want
in the most responsible way. So, to be a low carbon community we have to live
in a society where this is possible. The Socialist Party aims for a new society
where energy production and all other industries and services are owned and
democratically organised by the whole community. Then, production will be
driven by what is in our self-determined best interests, not what makes money
for a minority. This will allow us to manage our resources and environment in a
sustainable way, without relying on dwindling fossil fuels.

3. Do you think that the proposed Flood Relief Channel, at a
cost of £125M is the right solution to Oxford’s flooding problems?

The right solution to Oxford’s flooding problems should be
one which balances safeguarding people’s homes and belongings with the minimum
of harm to wildlife and conservation areas. Unfortunately, in our society, such
decisions are shaped by economic circumstances, particularly the funding limits
of the council and the drive for profits by any companies involved. The
question has become ‘what flood defences are best value for money?’ rather than
‘what flood defences are best for ourselves and the environment?’. This distorted
way of thinking distracts us from considering any proposals on their own
merits. And because of the way society is run, important decisions are made by
distant, unaccountable leaders with their own interests to protect. If we
instead lived in a society where its land, resources and infrastructure were
owned and democratically managed by the community as a whole, then decisions
about issues like flood defences could be made in a more reasonable, inclusive
way.

4. Do you commit to tackle cold homes by insulating, on
average, 1 million homes per year up to 2020, of which half are low-income
homes?

Being fuel poor and unable to afford home improvements can
only happen in a society where money is more important than our wellbeing. If
we lived in a society where we had free access to goods and services, then
there wouldn’t be anything to prevent the community building the most
energy-efficient homes, or increasing the use of renewable sources of power.
Funding or subsidies wouldn’t be required because money itself would no longer
be needed. So, the Socialist Party’s aim is to promote a new society where
financial cost isn’t a consideration at all.

5. Currently there is an EU-wide moratorium on the use of
neonicotinoid pesticides due to the harms these do to our bees. Do you commit
to strengthening the National Pollinator Strategy and extending the ban on
neonicotinoid pesticides?

The Socialist Party’s role is not to support specific
reforms, even if they help safeguard something as important as bee populations.
Our role is to draw attention to the circumstances in which issues like
pesticide use arise. Pesticides (as well as other chemicals and techniques like
genetic modification) are used because they make farms yield more profits by
boosting plant growth. Concerns about their effects on the environment are only
acted upon if they represent a threat to profitability or financial viability.
The decline in bees is serious enough to threaten many industries, and
therefore the ban on neonicotinoid pesticides was possible. Even if this ban is
beneficial, it was still made for economic reasons. If we lived in a society
where production was directly for use, without the drive for profits, then
economic considerations wouldn’t get in the way of deciding how best to use
resources.

6. Do you commit to protect the freedom to campaign by
immediately repealing the 2014 Lobbying Act?

The Lobbying Act has been criticised because it threatens to
stifle the voices of campaigners, trades unions and charities. The issue shows
how undemocratic our current society is. The more wealth an organization or
person has, the more political influence they can have. Parliament defends the
interests of the most wealthy, despite the pretence that MPs represent their
constituents. The Socialist Party is opposed to the whole system of government,
of which lobbying is just one aspect. What little democracy we have is worth
using, but it bears no relation to what a truly inclusive democratic society
could be.

Our candidate, Mike Foster for Oxford West and
Abingdon, is very assiduous at answering questions from electors, this time
from a local group in Abingdon, offering even the socialist position of
vegetable stalls in Abingdon!

1. Do you anticipate
making election promises in the campaign that you will be unable to keep if
elected?

I’m not making any promises at all! The Socialist Party
argues that our current economic and political system can’t be made to work in
the interests of the majority, so we don’t advocate reforming it. Candidates promising
to make changes when they are elected risk those promises being scuppered by
dictates from their party’s leaders and the cumbersome bureaucracy of the
system. And, any reforms have to fit in with what’s financially viable,
regardless of what individual MPs want. I’m standing in the election to
advocate a different kind of society; I’m not standing to make promises which
can’t be kept.

2. The only
independent fresh fruit and vegetable seller in Abingdon is a stall at the
market on Monday mornings whilst the vast majority are at work. How will you
help smaller businesses?

Smaller business struggle to compete against larger
companies which can plough more money into advertising, can absorb losses
better and can afford the most cost-effective methods. The Socialist Party aims
for a world where organisations of different sizes can co-exist without
economic competition getting in the way. This would involve the abolition of
the economic system itself, and its replacement by a society where resources,
industries and services are owned by everyone in common. This would mean that
all organisations would be working directly for people’s benefit, rather than
competing to survive in a cut-throat economy.

3. Which public
sector service sectors do you see as having been worst affected by austerity
measures and how would you seek to redistribute spending?

I work in homeless services, so I have seen how cuts have
prevented some of the most vulnerable people from having access to even basic
necessities. Funding shortages have led organisations to reduce the amount of
supported accommodation available, and tighten the criteria for those who can
receive a service. For example, ‘local connection’ policies have been brought
in across many areas, meaning that homeless people won’t receive much
housing-related support unless they have been in the area for at least six
months.

Any measures to redistribute public spending won’t work in
the long-term. Wealth tends to go where it can be re-invested to make more
money, and public services aren’t attractive investments. The Socialist Party
aims for a world of free access, meaning that all services (including
healthcare, education, transport etc.) would be provided without money being
needed. Such a society could only exist if its resources and infrastructure
were owned and managed by the community as a whole.

4. What steps would
you take to ensure the transparency of commercial interests in policy making?

The Socialist Party aims for a world where there are no
commercial interests at all in policy making. Commercial interests arise
because those who own the most wealth aim to add to their wealth. Having
economic power translates as having influence in decision-making. We advocate
the abolition of private ownership of resources, industries and services. If
society’s resources were to be owned and run by the community as a whole, then
the community could work together for the benefit of everyone. There would
still be differences of opinion about where to build houses, or how to organise
services, but decisions would be made democratically, without leaders. The form
this democracy takes would depend on the circumstances. Some decisions would be
made by elected representatives; others could be made by the whole community
being able to vote directly on an outcome. In a socialist society, democracy
would extend throughout society, and not just be limited to voting in some of
our leaders every five years or so. This framework would allow the most
transparency, inclusivity and accountability in decision making.

5. What controls
would you put in place in the housing sector to protect renters from
exploitative landlords?

Landlords rent property in order to make money for
themselves, not because people need housing. This is how the rental housing market
is structured, and legislation or revised guidelines can’t change it. Many
landlords want to provide decent housing, but some aim to exploit people who
have lower incomes and therefore less choice. All landlords aim to maximising
their income by spending as little as possible on repairs, decorating,
furniture etc. So, their interests pull in the opposite direction to those of
tenants.

The Socialist Party aims for a world where houses are built
directly because people need and want them. This would remove the distinction
between ‘owner’ and ‘tenant’, meaning that people would be able to have much
more control over where they live. A socialist society would also be able to
plan how many new houses are built based on what’s needed and wanted, rather
than what the financial market allows.

6. Why aren't more
tax evaders facing prison sentences?

I suspect that this is partly because tax evaders can afford
to hire accountants, solicitors and advisors to help them manage their finances
to their best advantage, in a way which draws least attention.

7. How will you
ensure that future housing developments in Abingdon are bought by residents
rather than landlords as "buy to let" properties?

See my reply to 5.

8. What are the
percentages of social housing that you will support?

See my reply to 5.

9. What are you doing
to stop the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement?

The Socialist Party’s view on TTIP:

For years the World Trade Organisation has been trying to
change the rules of global trade in the interests of global investors. The US
in particular wants to ease the out-sourcing and off-shoring of jobs,
permitting employers to seek the lowest wages and weakest government oversight
protections around the world; and to incorporate patent and intellectual
ownership rules that will further restrict access to medicines for millions and
could be expanded to include even surgical procedures and not just drug
treatments. Overall, it is a bid to implement a globalisation policy of trade
harmony at the lowest common denominator that will further the interests of
global investors by relaxing various standards to weaker levels of consumer and
public protection. It would represent a further reduction in the ‘sovereignty’
of national governments and their already weak power to resist the dictates of
the world market. But these negotiations have not yet reached a conclusion
because some countries do not want to open their doors too much to
multinational corporations.

At the same time the EU and the US are negotiating a
‘Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’. One of the points under
discussion is a mechanism known as ‘Investor-State Dispute Settlement’ (ISDS),
which would give corporations the right to challenge a country’s laws. Clearly,
this is something more than a mere ‘free-trade’ deal. Even if a new reform or
policy applies equally to domestic and foreign investors, ISDS proposes to
allow corporations to receive compensation for the absence of a ‘predictable
regulatory environment.’ Another proposal in TTIP is for ‘regulatory
cooperation’ which would give big business lobby groups wide opportunities to
influence decision-making, outside the normal democratic decision-making
processes on both sides of the Atlantic. The clear intention is to allow business
to in effect co-write international regulations, as already happens at national
level.

The socialist attitude is that, at the end of it all, the
arguments within the WTO which have so far prevented agreement are a dispute
between vying capitalist factions, free-trader versus protectionist, foreign
versus native capitalist competitors, fighting to defend or create conditions
that offer them the best return. Even so, among the casualties are working
people the world over, who will end up as collateral damage, more powerless and
more vulnerable than ever in the face of global capitalism. In short, this is a
problem of capitalism from which the working people of the world can never
emerge as winners. The way-out for them is not the restoration of 'national sovereignty'
but the establishment of a world society, without frontiers, where the
industrial and natural resources of the Earth will have become the common
heritage of all humanity and used to produce what people need instead of for
the profit of those who own the world. In short, global socialism. Then, they
will no longer be the casualties of trade agreements or disputes between
different capitalist states.

10. What will you do
to restore the balance between state surveillance and civil liberties?

The Socialist Party advocates the abolition of the state.
This is because the state is there to try and manage an economic and political
system which works in favour of the rich, and not the vast majority. State
surveillance is one technique used to try and run this system. One of the
reasons used to justify state surveillance is that it detects and prevents
crime. However, crime itself is created by the system: in a world where
deprivation and frustration are commonplace, some people will turn to criminal
behaviour. So, again, the system itself is at fault.

11. Would you support
compulsory sex and relationships advice for primary school pupils, including
information on LGBTQ relationships?

The Socialist Party doesn’t have policies on particular
issues like this. In a socialist society, such decisions would be made
democratically by parents, schools and anyone else with an interest, and not by
political parties. Personally, I think that age appropriate information about
sex and relationships (including LGBTQ issues) should be part of education for
primary school pupils.

12. If given a free
vote in parliament would you vote with your personal conscience or in line with
the wishes of your constituents?

The parliamentary system is inherently undemocratic. It is
part of the state, which is there to defend a system which is biased in favour
of the minority with most wealth. Also, I’m not sure how an MP – one person –
can represent the needs and wishes of tens of thousands of people with
different views and in different circumstances.

If socialist MPs were elected, it would be with the mandate
to dismantle the state, retaining any of its useful aspects, such as the
infrastructure of the NHS, for example. This would only be practical and
realistic when a majority of people were in favour of it. Regarding smaller
issues, a socialist MP should represent the wishes of the majority of their
constituents, although they would struggle to do this within the current
framework.

Meanwhile in Islington
North Bill Martin received this inquiry:

As a Manchester United fan and a voter in the
Islington North constituency, before I vote on May 7th I would like to know
whether you will support legislation to reform football governance? We believe
legislative changes are necessary as outlined here. Your response to the question below may
impact decisively on my voting intentions: Will you personally, and your party
generally, support new legislation as outlined in the above link? Bill
(personally, very much more a rugby football fan) answered:

The Socialist Party is campaigning for the creation of a
society based on common ownership of the wealth of the world, so that it can be
directly administered in all our interests, rather than in the interest of the
minority who currently own it. this
would mean an end to buying and selling, and production for needs, not for sale
and profit.

The issue your campaign highlights, of the obligation of
directors to shareholders over fans, neatly illustrates the problem of class
ownership of wealth. The pleasure of
football becomes a simple means to capitalist ends so long as the market
remains.

As the vast sums of television money show, football fans are
part of the product, as capitalist firms make extra profits through showing the
sport and advertising to football fans.

With common ownership
of the wealth of the world, we would see an end to money dominating sport, and
simple organisation for pleasure of the game as an end in itself. If our
delegates find themselves serving as a minority in a parliament dominated by
pro-capitalist parties, our membership will instruct them to vote (after a
democratic debate) in the best interests of the working class.

Regards,

Bill Martin

Socialist
Party Candidate, Islington North

In Brighton the activity of the "roller derby" was more of an interest.

Jacqueline Shodeke, Brighton
Kemptown, Socialist Party of Great Britain replied:

“Hi. I’m just
standing for socialism and not making promises on any subject because we’re not
running the sort of campaign where parties say “Vote for us and we’ll do this
or that for you”. So all I can say is that amateur sport is good, and that in a
socialist society all sports will be amateur, since it will be a society
without money and its corrupting influence on everything including sport.”

Research reveals that we are living through the largest
investment boom in human history. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated,
"Urgent action is needed to mobilise, redirect, and unlock the
transformative power of trillions of dollars of private resources to deliver on
sustainable development objectives." Oxford University's Bent Flyvbjerg,
an economic geographer who specializes in mega-project planning and management,
estimates global mega-project spending at between $6-9 trillion annually. This
is 8 percent of the world's combined GDP. A single "mega"
(million-dollar) project can easily exceed the national economy of a low-income
country; a single "giga" (billion-dollar) project can outpace the
earnings of a middle-income state; and a single "tera"
(trillion-dollar) investment project can compare with the GDP of one of the
world's top 20 richest nations.

Mega-projects are are growing in number and in scale.
Investments in behemoth infrastructure projects in the transportation, energy,
water and agricultural sectors, in particular, are rapidly increasing. Between
2004 and 2008, China alone "spent more on infrastructure in real terms
than during the entire 20th century” according to a 2014 paper published in the
Project Management Journal by Oxford University's Bent Flyvbjerg, an economic
geographer who specializes in mega-project planning and management. According to private sector estimates, an
additional $60-70 trillion of infrastructure capacity will be required by 2030
to spur economic growth. With current investment trends suggesting $30-35
trillion per year forthcoming from public sources and $10-15 trillion per year
from the private sector, this leaves $15-20 trillion unaccounted for. This
"infrastructure gap" can only be met by tapping into the roughly $85
trillion of long-term institutional finance held in sovereign wealth funds,
pension funds, hedge funds and insurance schemes around the world.

Titanic players in the world economy are forging ahead with
their plans for investment in infrastructure. China's the $100 billion Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), is designed to finance infrastructure
projects in the Asia-Pacific region and has 46 countries among its founding
members.

The Group of 20 (G20) launched the Global Infrastructure
Initiative, a multiyear program aimed at improving the environment for public
and private investment in large infrastructure projects worldwide.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and seven major
multilateral development banks (MDBs) expressing the need for additional
investment in "quality infrastructure." These seven institutions -
the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, the
Inter-American Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and the World
Bank Group - and the IMF announced their collective capacity to provide $130
billion of financing for infrastructure annually.

The World Bank unveiled its own Global Infrastructure
Facility (GIF) described as a "global, open platform that facilitates the
preparation and structuring of complex infrastructure Public-Private
Partnerships (PPP) to enable mobilization of private sector and institutional
investor capital." Comprised of other MDBs and 16 private sector partners
that include Citibank and HSBC, the GIF's partners hold over $8 trillion in
assets and has $80-100 million at its disposal, to "operate globally, to
support infrastructure projects in Emerging Markets and Developing Economies
(EMDE)" in the energy, water and sanitation, transport and
telecommunications sectors.

Already the World Bank's contribution to infrastructure
development is huge: In 2014, it provided $24 billion for this purpose. But
this is apparently not enough. The Bank's president, Jim Yong Kim, explained,
"Our loans and projects will fall far short of what the developing world
needs. The infrastructure gap is simply enormous - an estimated $1 trillion to
$1.5 trillion more is needed each year."

Brent Blackwelder, president emeritus of Friends of the
Earth International, calls "the ABCs of economics" - namely, whether
projects deliver their stated benefits, on time, within their allocated budget
- only one in 1,000 mega-projects meets the criteria for success. Flyvbjerg
reported that "nine out of 10 projects have overruns" while "50
percent overruns in real terms are common and over 50 percent are not
uncommon." In real terms, these overestimates end up costing billions: The
delayed Channel Tunnel - a 50-kilometer passage connecting the United Kingdom
with France - went 80 percent over budget, costing the British economy about
$17.8 billion.

"Very frequently, the government, taxpayers and
consumers meet the cost of these delays and extra expenditures," Nancy
Alexander, director of the Economic Governance Program at the Heinrich Böll
Foundation explained. Financialization entails creating infrastructure as an
asset class, so that investors - especially long-term investors - can finance
portfolios of public-private partnerships (PPPs). Yet, here again, there is no
evidence that financialization (especially speculative finance) will not
"socialize losses and privatize gains," since the state is required
to provide significant protection of investors and guarantee certain rates of
return. According to Alexander, neither the international financial
institutions (IFIs) nor the United Nations has engaged in a serious assessment
of how - or whether - financialization of investment plans will serve the
public interest. PPPs reveals little evidence of success and ample proof of
failure.

"An independent evaluation group (IEG) of the World
Bank did an evaluation of PPPs last July and found that, in financial terms, 67
percent of World Bank-funded energy distribution projects failed," she
explained. The same held true for 41 percent of water-related projects. “Why
the massive scaling up of PPPs without waiting for better results?" she
asked. "It isn't really logical."

The Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA).
In PIDA's first phase, the collective price tag for these mega-projects touches
$68 billion, and the result is a continent severed by highways, pipelines and
dams with no apparent assessment of their impact on the environment or the
poor. The governance bodies of PIDA show little regard for transparency,
information disclosure, consultation with civil society or participation by
affected communities. To the contrary, they have blocked engagement and some
governments have threatened those who challenge their plans. "Most of
these projects are directly counter to any notion of sustainability because
they are producing incredibly long-term costs ... and are putting the risks of
failure on to the public rather than onto private investors," Blackwelder
said. "The result is ... billions of dollars going into the coffers of
transnational corporations [while] compromising the lives of the poor and
undermining all life support systems on this planet needed to sustain a global
population of more than 7 billion."

Even now, Ethiopia's gigantic Gilgel Gibe III hydroelectric
power project on the Omo River, which feeds the world's largest desert lake,
Lake Turkana, in Kenya, is causing widespread hunger and threatening the lives
and livelihoods of several hundred thousand people who have relied on these
fisheries and surrounding forests for generations. This is just one example. The
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed that
World Bank-funded projects displaced an estimated 3.4 million people between
2004 and 2013, the majority of those displaced were from Asia and Africa, where
the Bank pumped $455 billion into 7,200 projects over a single decade. While
the bulk of the projects were aimed at strengthening transportation networks,
energy grids and water supply systems in some of the poorest countries for the
purpose of reducing inequality, in reality, they have added to the
impoverishment of some of the world's most destitute people - farmers,
indigenous communities, slum dwellers and fisher-folk.

Experts fear that public-private partnerships will only
build on this history, broadening - rather than shrinking - an already gaping
wealth gap. In a presentation to the Manchester Business School in July 2014,
Nicholas Hildyard, founder-director of the UK-based research and advocacy group
The Corner House, broke down the myths surrounding PPPs, concluding that they
are less about "financing development" and more about
"developing finance" - which in turn "enables the extraction of
public wealth for private gain." In a world where the wealth gap between
the richest and poorest nations has increased from 35:1 during the colonial
period to 80:1 at the turn of the millennium, and the world's richest 85 people
control more wealth between them than one half of the entire earth's population
put together, the question remains: Who is this investment boom for? The IMF,
World Bank and others have been aggressively lending to the developing world by
mainly dealing with corrupt head's of states. They convince the corrupt
officials to borrow for costly projects that have actually been found to have
harmed those nations since the true aim of the lenders are to collect hefty
profits from the interest and fees not what happens to the project after the
contracts have been signed.

"We are building more pipelines, more dams, more
bridges than we can maintain and roads to nowhere," Blackwelder said.
"We have now reached a crossroads, where we have got to change the vision
of what is 'sustainable' and start investing in an entirely new
mentality."

The socialist do present a new mentality and our criticism is
broader and deeper than mere reform of

investment policies. Reliance on the
imagined powers of money runs through every problem. The fetishism of money is
part of the ideology of the profit system that claims uncountable victims
across the world. Every day politicians give lack of money as a reason why we
cannot provide better infrastructure, health-care or reliable electricity and
water supplies or the many other public services that are in urgent need of
improvement. Throughout the world the same mantra is chanted week in and week
out, year after year, “if only we had more money, something could be done”.
This ignores the fact that productive resources are materials, means of
production, transport, energy, communications and networks of infrastructure
through which goods and services are produced. And all these depend on one
single resource which is labour. These are the real resources on which the
lives of communities depend and there is an abundance of labour to provide for
needs. At times there may be millions of unemployed people, factories standing
idle and unused materials being stockpiled but capitalist politicians still
repeat, “We do not have the resources.” They are unable to see the availability
of real resources because their minds are pre-occupied by the illusion that
only money resources count. They imagine that real resources can only be
brought into use by money, whereas the opposite is the truth. The powers of the
community to solve problems can on be fully released with socialism and the
abolition of money.

The need for international bank-loans and appeals for
finance are a pathetic substitute for the availability of real resources and
the freedom that communities in socialism would have to immediately use them. A
“fetish” means when an object is worshipped on account of its supposed magical
powers. We sacrifice our children in homage to the god of money, on the altar
of the capitalist system.

One of our election
campaign team has endeavoured to interest the media (as yet to no avail) with
this message:

There is no national solution to the problems that we face
at this election. Even the politicians competing for your vote admit that there
are global worldwide forces working against them.

We can either address the global causes of our problems or
we can pretend they do not exist and make promises we cannot keep. All
candidates except the socialist candidate are offering to continue with the existing
state of affairs in which 1% of the population owns more wealth than the other
99%.

The earth and its resources are owned by a very small
minority. For example the richest 92 people own more wealth than half the
population. Wealth is produced for sale on the world market with a view to
making a profit for the tiny minority.

These are the global forces working against us and require
our attention.

The socialist candidate is an elected delegate of the World
Socialist Movement, he is not a leader and he makes no promises to solve the
problems caused by capitalism.

The World Socialist Movement advocates a democratic
revolution to take into common ownership the earth’s resources and to organise
the production of goods and services to meet human needs instead of the needs
of profit

Vin Maratty,

Election Agent for
The Socialist Party (GB)

Easington
Constituency

Here's a recording of
discussion on immigration on BBC Radio
Oxford at which our candidate, Kevin
Parkin, took part:

Kevin managed to bring
out well that socialists consider themselves "citizens of the world"
and not, like the other candidates, Brits wanting to control "our"
borders and keep out immigrant benefit "scroungers". Bit annoying
that the presenter kept on saying that "immigration" was a big issue when
it's not really, only what the media are telling people to think is, so opening
the way for UKIP whose representative caught the ball and ran with it.

We can only sow the
seeds of the socialist idea, we cannot force them to sprout and bloom but we do
trust that eventually the principles of socialism will germinate and grow

On 7 May, you will have your occasional ration of democracy.
It's all very well having a vote—but are you normally given any real choice?
Let's face it, if it wasn't for the political party’s name on the election leaflet,
could you tell which party was which? It's tempting—in the absence of any real
alternative—to get drawn into the phoney war that is political debate today.
Whether Labour or Tory, SNP or UKIP, they all spout the same promises. But
it all amounts to the same thing—they offer no alternative to the present way
of running society. Do you really think who wins an election makes any
difference to how you live? And do politicians (whether left-wing, nationalist
or right-wing) actually have much real power anyway? OK, they get to open
supermarkets and factories, but it's capitalism and the market system which
closes them down.

Why are there homeless people in the streets and empty
houses with "for sale" signs?

Why do some people get stressed working long hours while
others get stressed from the boredom of unemployment?

The press and television are screaming at us about the
importance of this general election. It's all nonsense of course. The day after
the election we will find that it is business as usual. Men and women of the
working class will return to the office, the factory or the hospital where we
work for a wage or a salary. That is those of us "lucky" enough to
have a job. The same round of work, insecurity and poverty will continue
irrespective of the make-up of the new parliament.

If you don't like present-day society, if you are fed up
with the way you are forced to live, if you think the root cause of most social
problems is the market system, then your ideas echo closely with ours. We are
not promising to deliver socialism to you. We are not putting ourselves forward
as leaders. This new society can only be achieved if you join together to
strive for it. If you want it, then it is something you have to bring about
yourselves. The Socialist Party are not after your unthinking support. We do not
want your vote unless you understand that the present system of
society—capitalism—cannot be made to run in the interests of the majority. We
are taking this opportunity to reach out to as many workers as possible. We We
want you to consider an alternative society to the present production for
profit rat-race that is capitalism. We want you to look at present-day society
and ask yourself: does it operate in your and your family's interest?

This society operates against the majority and only favours
a tiny handful of wealthy owners. The whole purpose of producing anything today
is to sell it and make a profit. No profit, then no production. That is why so
many live in sub-standard housing while building workers are unemployed. That
is why people throughout the world are undernourished while farmers are paid
not to grow food. Production for profit means that the world is armed to the
teeth. Billions are spent on armies, the whole purpose of which is to protect
markets, trade routes and sources of raw material. Wars are inevitable under
capitalism. Capitalism is based on competition, and the logical outcome of
global competition is military violence.

At this election you have a wide choices of parties.
Conservative, Lib Dem, Labour, various Nationalist, Green, even some calling
themselves "socialists". There are many differences in their
policies, but what have they all got in common? They want your vote on the
basis that they could run the system better or more fairly. Despite their
differences they all want to run the buying and selling system of capitalism,
and this applies as much to the "left" as the out and out supporters
of capitalism. This system is based on the production of all wealth by the
working class for a wage or salary. The owning class live off the unpaid labour
of the working class. To talk of "fairer" capitalism is like talking
of "fairer" robbery. Capitalism must go and be replaced by a new
society based on common ownership and democratic control. There must be
production to meet people's needs instead of production for profit. We must all
be free to take what we require to satisfy our needs, without being rationed as
today by the size of our wage packet. This new society can only
come about when a majority want it and are determined to get it. Nobody can
bring it about for you. So it's up to you, not the politicians. The future is
in your hands, not theirs.

We campaign to get
workers to say no to a society based on profit, privilege and competition and
yes to a society based on equality, cooperation and meeting people's needs.
Where we are not standing any candidates our message to those who want
socialism is to use their first vote to vote against all the various reformist
and pro-capitalist candidates by writing the word "SOCIALISM" across
the ballot paper.

The
stories about the tens of thousands of people seeking entry in New
York’s “poor door” are an urgent reminder of the need for more
affordable housing across our country. (Image: Children's Defense Fund)

More
than 88,000 people have applied to enter the “poor door” at a new
luxury condominium tower on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Only one
in 1,600 will win the lottery to live there. Some months ago a New York
developer made headlines with the plans for this building, which takes
advantage of zoning rules encouraging affordable housing by including
some low-priced rental units along with the luxury condos for sale. A
separate entrance for the people living in the low-income apartments
continues with segregated living inside. Low-income tenants won’t be
allowed to use the pool, gym, private theater, or any of the other
amenities reserved for the wealthy owners. Critics immediately pounced
on this design as a modern-day form of Jim Crow. But the need for
affordable housing is so overwhelming that when the deadline came this
month to participate in a lottery for the spots behind the “poor door”
tens of thousands applied. Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that most of the 219 luxury condos on the other side of the building have sold, some for more than $25 million.

The contrast between the haves and have-nots might be especially
stark at that New York building, but millions of families across the
country are finding themselves on the wrong side of the poor door.
Housing is the single largest expense for most families and for far too
many is growing increasingly out of reach. The number of families with
worst-case housing needs increased from 6 million in 2007 to 8.5 million
in 2011, including 3.2 million families with children, and the number
of homeless public school students was 85 percent higher in 2012-2013 than before the recession.

Ayriq Sims has been one of those students. He and his siblings spent
their childhood bouncing between unstable living arrangements, extended
stays at relatives’ homes, and homeless shelters. Even when Ayriq’s
family had somewhere to stay, he remembers all the times their lights
and water were turned off, or when he went hungry because he’d made his
younger siblings something to eat but there wasn’t enough food left for
him to eat too. Through it all Ayriq stayed committed to excelling in
school and winning an academic scholarship to The Ohio State University.
But even this year, his senior year in high school and on his way to
college, he found himself homeless again. Ayriq says: “I don’t want to
be homeless again. I don’t want that to be who I am.”

The Children’s Defense Fund honored Ayriq with a scholarship for
overcoming tremendous odds. Homelessness and housing instability can
have serious, negative consequences on children’s emotional, cognitive,
and physical development, academic achievement, and success as adults.
Federal rental assistance, including public housing and vouchers for
private rentals, helps about 5 million of the neediest low-income
households afford a place to live. But because of funding limitations
only about 1 in 4 needy families with children receives assistance. To
add insult to injury, the Republican House and Senate budgets are
proposing severe cuts to already inadequate and desperately needed
housing subsidies. The White House estimates that compared to the
President’s budget proposal, the Republican House budget would cut
housing vouchers for 133,000 families and housing assistance for 20,000
rural families. This is on top of the 2013 sequestration cuts that led
to 100,000 fewer families receiving assistance by June 2014.

In our Children’s Defense Fund report Ending Child Poverty Now we
asked the nonprofit Urban Institute to study the impact of expanding
the housing voucher program to better meet the huge need among poor and
near-poor families with children who would have to pay more than half of
their income to afford a fair market rent apartment. The Urban
Institute found that providing enough subsidies to serve eligible
families would reduce child poverty by 20.8 percent and lift 2.3 million
children out of poverty — the largest impact among the nine policy
improvements we proposed in our report. More than 2.5 million more
households would receive a subsidy, worth an average of $9,435. We could
easily pay for this housing subsidy expansion by making fairer and
common sense reforms to close corporate accounting tax loopholes, saving
$58 billion a year. Or if we had more responsible and more just members
of Congress on both sides of the aisle, instead of repealing the estate
tax which amounts to a $27 billion a year giveaway to the
5,400 ultra-wealthy estates worth over $5.4 million — in the top
two-tenths of 1 percent — as the Senate and House both voted to do, we
could invest the $24 billion a year needed to ensure poor and near-poor
children a chance to grow up in a stable place to call home.

Instead of making extraordinary students like Ayriq struggle to beat
the odds every day we should be taking common sense and essential steps
like this to change the odds. The stories about the tens of
thousands of people seeking entry in New York’s “poor door” are an
urgent reminder of the need for more affordable housing across our
country. Cutting back on already inadequate help to those most in need
to give more tax welfare subsidies to those least in need is not the
answer and is profoundly unjust. Families should not have to win a
lottery to live in segregation just to get a roof over their heads.

Another often proposed solution, a 'common sense' reform aiming to alleviate some of the conditions of poverty. There's some old saying about common sense not being too common and as far as pushing for reforms here and there we can go along with that old saying. All things taken into consideration the common sense approach would favour changing the system totally so that such inequalities were impossible to happen. A society built on common ownership with no economic discrimination possible would guarantee housing for all, along with access to the products of our labour, not as charity but as a right. The common sense solution is a socialist revolution.

Election 2015:
Socialist Party of Great Britain outlines election plans.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is standing 10
candidates in the general election.

The party does not have specific policies, but advocates the
abolition of capitalism. It proposes establishing common ownership and democratic
control of the world's resources, saying that there would be no state or
classes in a socialist society.

The party does not have a leader, believing all members
should be equal. "What we stand for is socialism, where all the
resources of the world would be owned in common by all the people of the world,
to be used under democratic control to produce what they need, instead of now,
under capitalism, where there is production for profit," says Adam Buick,
a party representative.

And Mr Buick explained why the party does not have a leader.
“We say only sheep need leaders. Leaders implies followers, and a follower is
somebody who has abdicated their responsibility to act to someone else. What we
stand for is a participatory democracy where everybody takes part in it. Don't
delegate the authority to act to some professional politician," he said.

The party says the system it advocates would be a wageless,
moneyless, worldwide society of common - not state - ownership and democratic
control of the means of wealth production and distribution.

It also says that under the party's proposals, there would
be a sharp break with capitalism, with no "transition period" or
gradual implementation of socialism.

"People say that in an election they are electing a
government; in fact, in most constituencies, this is not the case," Mr
Buick said. "What we are saying is people should express what they want.
If they want a society without frontiers, without class, without state, without
money, without wages - voting for one of our candidates is an opportunity to
show what they want and also, at the same time, of course, rejecting the
present capitalist system."

The candidates standing for the Socialist Party of Great
Britain are:-

The British and other EU governments response to the
boatloads of refugees trying to make it across the Mediterranean was driven by a
warped logic. Tory minister Baroness Anelay’s claimed last year that supporting
search and rescue missions for sinking vessels was a “‘pull factor’,
encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing”, convinced
others in the European Union. Sure enough, when they stopped trying to save
drowning people, they drowned. Leaving poor people to die on its shores in the
hope it will discourage more poor people from coming hardly qualifies as
humanitarian ideals.

The reason the Tories thought they could get away with
pushing such a heinous and callous plan is because they felt there would be no
electoral price to pay for beating up on foreigners. Labour, with its “Controls
on immigration” mug, has wilfully contributed to a political culture whereby
immigration is understood not as an enriching opportunity but a sickness of
which migrants are the most obvious symptom. Generally speaking, the opposition
has not challenged the prevailing misconceptions but pandered to them. The
fundamental issue is not what is pulling migrants but what pushes them. By the
time they have boarded these rickety vessels they have often paid thousands of
dollars to be led through the desert. People don’t make that kind of journey so
they can come to the west and draw state-benefits. Their aim is not to capsize
and be rescued but to get to the other shore.

Throughout Europe, xenophobic and racist parties shape the
agenda, preying on people’s ignorance and fear. According to opinion polls,
Britons and Spaniards believe they have twice as many immigrants in their
country as there actually are; in Italy, Belgium and France it’s closer to
three times; in Hungary it’s eight times; in Poland, more than 30. No wonder
they’re frightened. The politics of xenophobia can be summed up into a single
sentence. “They’re coming here to get what’s yours.” This is, of course, a lie.

A return to search and rescue missions and more funding for
patrols – will save more lives in the short term. But such a plan is also
clearly inadequate for anything other than the shortest of terms. It seeks not
to cure the problem but to placate the consciences of those who have been most
culpable.

No substantial immigration policy is possible that does not
engage with the reality of capitalism. 3 billion people live on less than $2.50
a day. The global 99% did not come about by accident. It’s the result of
centuries of colonization and imperialism plus the current corruption that has
allowed a handful of people, in different ways at different times, to steal
natural resources and pilfer from the world’s common treasury. Inequalities
have been reinforced by a global trade system that operates according to the
golden rule – that those who have the gold make the rules. Put bluntly, Europe
is rich (even if those riches are most definitely not evenly divided) in no
small part because other nations are poor.

On top of that, a large number of these people are displaced
by wars. The top three nations from which maritime refugees to the EU come are
Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea. The country where they are most likely to start
their journey is Libya, which is now effectively a failed state. In other
words, many are running for their lives through countries NATO have bombed.
Those politicians in the west who insist we cannot take in “the world’s misery”
should acknowledge how much of that misery they are responsible for. Many are
fleeing to here because European governments insisted on sending troops and
bomber planes there. The U.S.-backed bombing campaign that helped bring down
Moammar Kadafi in 2011 also destroyed Libyan coast guard and naval vessels
deployed during Kadafi's rule to intercept illicit migrant traffic. Libya's
previous cooperation with Italy on immigration matters has gone by the wayside
since Libya's subsequent descent into chaos.

The migrant crisis is exacerbated by climate change. Climate
change is affecting such basic environmental conditions as rainfall patterns
and temperatures and is contributing to more frequent natural disasters like
floods and droughts. Over the long term, these changing conditions can
undermine the rural livelihoods of farming, herding and fishing. The resulting
rural dislocation is a factor in people’s decisions to migrate. Nobody argues
that climate change is the only factor driving them. But climate change cannot
be ignored. The second-order effects of climate change — undermined agriculture
and competition for water and food resources — can contribute to instability
and to higher numbers of migrants. Underlying climate and demographic trends
can squeeze the margins of life at the family and community levels, contribute
to decisions to migrate, heighten conflicts over basic resources and threaten
state structures and regional stability. In northwest Africa, climate change
will exacerbate difficulties in areas already facing numerous environmental and
developmental challenges. Overall, up to 250 million people in Africa are
projected to suffer from water and food insecurity in the 21st century. In the
Sahel region, three-quarters of rain-fed arable land will be greatly affected
by climate change. Droughts and flooding are already more frequent in Niger and
northern Nigeria, along with temperature rises that jeopardize crucial rural
activities. The Niger River faces diminishing flows of roughly 10%, which
numerous new dam projects will only worsen. If current water consumption trends
continue, withdrawals from the Niger basin will increase six-fold by 2025, with
profound implications for Nigeria. Lake Chad, which supports 25m people, is
drying up and is one-20th of its size in 1960. Northern Algeria, home to most
of the country’s population and agriculture, may see rainfall reductions of 10%
to 20% by 2025. Rainfall in Morocco is expected to decrease by 20% by the end
of the century. North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa are tied together by longstanding
and well-established migratory routes. As early as 2011, research indicated
that about 65,000 migrants passed through Agadez, Niger, on their way north to
Algeria, Morocco and Europe each year. As climate change takes a toll on
farming, herding and fishing, undermining livelihoods and contributing to
decisions to migrate, these numbers could grow larger. Nigeria is losing more
than 1,350 square miles of land to desertification each year, a pace that may
increase with climate change. With 70% of Nigeria’s population reliant on
agriculture for its livelihood, and 90% of Niger’s workforce reliant on
rain-fed agriculture, desertification represents a fundamental threat to rural
life. These are not the abstract complaints of climate scientists. In Niger,
frequent droughts have impoverished many and contributed to migration. When
faced with deteriorating conditions, humans have long turned to migration; it
is a basic adaptive mechanism.

Any effort to address the migrant tragedy playing out in the
Mediterranean must address and incorporate these deeper-root causes. Though the
warning signs have long been evident, policymakers still tend to focus on the
symptoms rather than the causes.

Many of the smugglers are themselves immigrants who first
arrived in Europe via the clandestine passage. Some have since won political
asylum in Italy or elsewhere, authorities say. Though widely demonized as
ruthless villains, the smugglers seem to view themselves as pragmatic
businessmen providing an essential service, the Italian wiretaps indicate.
"We do a dirty job; we can't help everyone," said one smuggler.
"They want to leave and we make it possible."

The countries bearing the heaviest challenges with refugees
are poor, developing world nations such as Pakistan, Lebanon and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. And xenophobia is not a preserve of wealthy, white
nations. South Africa is still recovering from an outbreak of anti-immigrant violence
that left many dead last week.

If you build a 10ft fence to keep out people who are hungry,
they will build an 11ft ladder to climb over it. If you weaponise a fortress to
repel people who fear hunger or war, they will seek ever more desperate ways to
penetrate it. They have no choice. They are fighting for their lives. And we socialists
support them. We said in an earlier blog post – it all stems from an economic
system in which borders are wide open
for capital yet close firmly to people.

As the death toll climbs it is once again apparent that even
a “natural” disaster such as an earthquake can be mitigated…with money.

‘If we had money we would have built a strong house,’ says one woman who, like hundreds of thousands of others across Nepal, has been left
homeless. “But we had none. There is no place to go. There is no one to look
after us. Life was hard for us already. I don’t want to be alive,” she said.

What all the casualties mostly share is that they are poor.
Though some had predicted that an earthquake in Kathmandu would bring the newly
constructed cement apartment blocks tumbling down, it was the older, brick and
wood homes that, almost exclusively, were reduced to rubble. Anyone who stayed
in these could not afford better.

“It’s obvious” said Bhaskar Gautam, a local sociologist “The
wealthier you are, the stronger the house you have,” .

Often four or five storeys high and subdivided into cheap
family apartments like tenements in Victorian London, the homes of people have
long been known as a risk. The family’s home was their “bad luck”. “We should have
moved 20 years ago,” said one victim.

Thousands are still camping on open spaces, frightened to
return to their homes. Some say they will wait until 72 hours have passed, but
continuing aftershocks scare. Many, too, are still seeking treatment for bad
injuries, some waiting outside hospitals. The morgue at Bir hospital, the
city’s biggest, is overflowing, with bodies now lined up outside.

There is also the fear of disease. “Now there could be
communicable illnesses, diarrhea, flu and so forth. The earthquake will have
broken all the sewers and pipes so the water supply will be contaminated,” said
Dr Sameer Thapa

It is necessary to understand why the poor suffer more even
in natural calamities. The world is structured in such a way the poor bear the
brunt. Poor people are and will be always most susceptible to disasters and
unpredictability (natural, financial, wars, etc.). They are unable to invest in
preventive, security, education and often lack surplus for relocation or
compensation. Poorer communities take far longer to rebuild and are far more to
likely to disease, aftershocks and becoming further impoverished because they
cannot to afford to privately re-build, move temporarily or simply migrate to another
area.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Here is the reply of our candidate for Oxford
West & Abingdon, Mike Foster, to an invitation to comment on Oxford
University Student Union General Election Manifesto.

The
Socialist Party isn’t standing in this election to support particular reforms
or changes to the current system. This is because we believe that the way our
society is put together can’t be made to work in the interests of the vast
majority of people. MPs who start out with good intentions about reforms and
representing their constituents soon get stifled by cumbersome bureaucracy and made
to follow vested interests or the dictates of the elite. So, we’re standing in
this election to make the point that the whole system which we live under has
to be replaced.

Free
Education. Postgraduate funding

Economic
forces have always shaped universities, but the last twenty years have seen an
increasing marketisation of higher education. The cost of paying tuition fees
and student loans prevents many people from going to university, while those
who do become students end up thousands of pounds in debt. The state can no
longer afford to subsidise education as much as before, so there is limited
scope for any increases to funding. Parties campaigning for change within the
system have to ensure that any reforms fit in with what the economy allows.

The Socialist Party argues that the system
itself doesn’t work in the interests of the vast majority of us. This is
because society’s infrastructure is owned and managed by an elite. So, we have
to buy what we need and want from them, and what we get depends on how much
money we have. As long as education is something to be bought and sold, it
can’t be as fulfilling as it should be. If society was owned and run by the
community as a whole, then we could have free access to the kinds of education
we want.

Immigration
and international students, European Union

Whether or not the UK has the closer
economic ties to Europe which comes with EU membership, we’re still all
operating in the same economic market. So it doesn’t really matter whether our
rules are decided within the UK or in Brussels. Wherever they’re decided, laws
and trade deals will aim to protect the interests of states and corporations.
Neither the EU nor the UK government represents the vast majority of us

The Socialist Party aims for a world without
national borders. Countries, as the boundaries of different states, represent
the ruling class who own the land and resources there. This way of dividing up
the world doesn’t benefit the vast majority of us, who have very little
influence in how the country we happen to live in is run. In a socialist
society, people could move freely anywhere, without being dictated to by
economic and political pressures. The artificial divisions between us which
come with our nationality would no longer apply. If the world was owned in
common, then we would live and work co-operatively for the benefit of everyone.

Unpaid
Internships. Youth Unemployment

The Socialist
Party advocates zero employment! Employment is inherently exploitative. We sell
our time and energy to an employer in return for money to buy what we need.
But, the amount we collectively receive in wages is less than the value of the
work we contribute. This is because the employer needs to make a surplus or a
profit, and this wealth stays with them. As well as financially exploiting us,
this arrangement means we often feel powerless in an unfulfilling job. Unpaid
internships are particularly exploitative, and take advantage of people keen
for work experience.

Unemployment usually means having to struggle
to buy necessities on a low income. Recent restrictions on who qualifies for
sickness benefits, housing benefit and jobseekers allowance have made life
harder for some of the most vulnerable people. Benefit claimants face both a
lack of opportunities to progress and being stigmatised by some sections of the
media.

The Socialist Party aims for a world where
all work is voluntary and co-operative, without employers or employed. We would
have the freedom to train and work in whichever career we wanted. If society’s
infrastructure was owned in common, rather than by a minority, we could run it
to benefit everyone. We could work sustainably with all the resources we need,
without the market system holding us back. The reasons for the stress and
frustration of being employed – and unemployed – won’t exist.

NHS

In our
current society, the NHS is limited by what funding it can attract. Regardless
of whether this funding comes from the state or from private companies, the NHS
still has to survive in the same economic market as any other business. Keeping
costs low is one way to remain financially viable, so the health service will
always tend to be under-staffed and under-resourced. This explains recent
problems with the capacity of Accident & Emergency departments and mental
health services.

Wage-slave abolitionist, Mike Foster, explains socialism

The Socialist Party aims for a
comprehensive health service which has all the trained staff and resources it
needs. The only way this could happen is if it was part of a society where all
resources are owned and democratically run by the community as a whole. Then,
we could work directly to benefit ourselves and others. This health service,
along with all other services and goods, would be free for anyone to access.

Sex
Relationship Education

The Socialist
Party doesn’t have policies on particular issues like Sex and Relationship
Education. In a socialist society, such decisions would be made democratically
by students, educational establishments and anyone else with an interest, and
not by political parties. Personally, I think that the sex and relationship
education should emphasise issues like consent, health, respect, and the needs
of disabled and LGBTQ people.

Meanwhile, in the Easington constituency, candidate
Steve Colborn pointed out to one critic:

“To categorise myself as "far
left", is I'm afraid, merely another one of the false assertions put
forward by those who claim a knowledge they, in actuality, do not possess.

The Socialist Party does not support capitalism, in any way, shape or form. Whether as reformist supporters of capitalism, Labour, SWP. Militant, CPGB or any of the other reformist
variations.

Nor do we/did we consider the so-called
Socialist/Communist revolutions in the USSR, China, Cuba et al, as was clearly
stated by us, at the exact times these events occurred, to be anything other
than revolutions "to" capitalism, not away from it!

The political parties mentioned and others,
the countries mentioned and others, all support systems which are based on commodity
production for profit. They support "elites". A world where we have
"classes, i.e. rich and poor, capitalists and workers. A world divided
into nation states. The Socialist Party, neither support these ideas, nor
advocate them.

Our total focus is to replace capitalism,
not push the futile attempts to reform it. Just over 100 years of Labour Party
history, is proof positive of the futility of this position and an inability to
see this, is the profoundest case of burying ones head in the sand, ever seen.”